B.r. Ambedkar And His Ethics

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, also known as Babasaheb, was an Indian jurist, political leader, philosopher, historian, orator, economist, teacher, editor, prolific writer, and revolutionary who inspired India's Dalit struggle. In addition, he was the primary architect of the Indian Constitution. He was one of the first Dalits in India to receive a college education. But, in order to do so, he had to overcome various social and financial difficulties. 

 

•    He experienced untouchability first hand in school, where he was separated from caste Hindus. Only if the water was poured from a height by the peon was he allowed to sip from the vessel.

 

•    Ambedkar acquired a reputation as a researcher in economics and practised law for a few years after gaining a law degree and doctorates for his study and research in law, economics, and political science. He had the potential to live a very nice life. 

 

•    He had degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and he was a very brilliant and educated man. Nonetheless, he devoted himself entirely to the cause of the poor.

 

•    He had known the misery, difficulties, and humiliations of being born into the Mahar cast, a Maharashtrian community that is considered untouchable. 

 

•    According to Ambedkar, the Hindu social structure based on the four varnas generates inequality and is the originator of the caste system and untouchability, both of which are expressions of inequality. He believed that the only way to solve the problems of the untouchables was to take a drastic approach.

 

•    His concept was based on the well-known three values of liberty, equality, and fraternity. They served as the foundation for his ideal society. Ambedkar believes that the perfect society should include all three of them. He would not be satisfied if there were none.

 

•    For more than two millennia, the caste system, which subjected more than a fifth of the population to levels worse than animals, became his primary target. This Herculean undertaking, however, almost totally obscures the truth that his battles extend far beyond caste conflicts and instead cover all types of exploitation. He advocated for oppressed groups such as labourers, peasants, and women, as well as downtrodden classes.

 

•    His fight was aimed not only at the freedom of the untouchables, but also at the abolition of the entire caste system. Despite his opposition to Brahminism, he never harboured any animosity toward Brahmins or classified anyone as a friend or adversary based on caste.

 

•    His movement's launch vehicle, the Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha, comprised a majority of forward caste individuals in its executive body. Even later in his movement, whether it was the Mahad fight or the Indian Labour Party, this objective of having a non-caste base for the organisation could be seen constantly.

•    Prior to Ambedkar, anti-caste campaigns were mostly welfare-oriented. Some desired a higher status in the caste structure for their own caste, while others saw their caste's inferior culture as the source of their misery and sought to improve it. 

 

•    He correctly identified that the caste system is primarily supported by the unique economic structure of the Indian village, with land connections being the most prominent aspect. 

 

•    He toyed with the concept of a separate community for dalits at one point and pushed them to abandon villages for cities at another. He had grasped that castes were supported by a number of factors, including religio-cultural ties, feudal ties in village settings, with land connections serving as the crux, and a socio-political nexus with the state. As a result, annihilation of castes necessitated the annihilation of all of them.

 

•    He took a pragmatic approach and quickly grasped the importance of political power in this multi-pronged offensive. He emphasised the importance of political power in bringing about a residual shift in the belief system, whether through cultural or religious means. For the first time, he elevated the issue of untouchability and caste from the realm of culture to the political agenda.

 

•    Individuals and social groupings advance only via healthy competition in society, according to Ambedkar. However, the government should keep in mind that the weaker parts of society, who make up a sizable portion of the population, are unable to participate in this competition on an equal and open basis. This will result in devastation since progress will be made primarily among the upper castes. 

 

•    The lower caste will be unaffected, resulting in a widening divide. This chasm could spark a revolution, which could lead to more violent protests and repression. Adopting a liberal compassionate attitude toward the lower classes was the greatest approach to stave off revolt. 

 

•    The upper classes should make concessions gracefully and in a timely manner, rather than waiting for the lower classes to demand them. If a revolution occurs, it does not imply that the people are terrible or that they should have been more severely repressed. 

 

•    It demonstrates that the higher classes lacked the wisdom and confidence to make appropriate concessions in a timely manner. It caters to the comparatively weaker parts by providing concessions or supports for a period of time, essentially to prepare them for this universal competition. In this competition, the State serves as the referee. Representatives from all social groups are intended to rule this state.

 

•    Ambedkar intended to separate the untouchables or impoverished classes from Hindu society, whereas Gandhi did not want to damage Hindu society's structure. He was well aware that society had not yet progressed to the point where all caste and class structures could be destroyed. Brahmanism will never relinquish its ostensible superiority. As a result, it was critical to get away from it. Encourage cross-caste marriages as one of the most effective strategies to undermine the caste system. 

 

•    Ambedkar was well aware of capitalism's exploitative tendencies, and he declared capitalism and Brahminism to be the twin enemies of his cause. He was well aware of the inhumane exploitation of employees that the expanding commitment to capitalism had unleashed.

 

•    His Independent Labour Party (ILP, founded in August 1936) was an attempt to address the issue of capitalism exploitation while also combining caste and class struggles. 

 

•    Various workers' problems were taken up by the ILP, including the leadership of a mill workers' united strike, parliamentary fights for workers' interests in respect to the Industrial Disputes Act, and various legal improvements enacted when he was in the Viceroy's Executive Council. 

 

•    The foundation of the ILP was not welcomed or endorsed by communist officials, who claimed that it would result in a split in working-class votes. Ambedkar said that communist leaders were striving for worker rights but not for dalit workers' human rights.

 

•    Ambedkar's attitude toward imperialism has been skewed from the start, primarily because he refused to participate in the independence struggle and opposed Gandhi, who was seen by many as the personification of anti-imperialism. He tried to keep a strategic distance from the colonial government. 

 

•    According to him, the resource-poor dalits would not be able to confront their strong enemy all at once. On multiple fronts, he didn't want to waste and dissipate his exceedingly limited resources.

 

•    He was aware, though, of the colonial regime's basic exploitative nature. He erupted on multiple occasions, declaring that British imperialism and Indian feudalism were the two leaches clinging to the Indian people. There was, however, a significant disparity between his and others' perspectives. For example, he disapproved of linking anti-imperialism with anti-British sentiment.

 

•    He pointed out that imperialism's opposition cannot be effective unless its followers within the country are left alone. He had long felt that a successful war against imperialism could not be waged without fighting the country's landlords, mill owners, and moneylenders - imperialism's allies. 

 

•    It was for this reason alone that he began to doubt the so-called freedom movement undertaken under Congress's leadership as an anti-imperialist struggle. He said that the Congress primarily represented the feudal lords and urban capitalists, who he claimed were the two main exploiters of the Indian population. 

 

•    Although Gandhi's charismatic leadership was crucial in rallying the masses to his cause, it primarily relied on bargaining with colonial rulers to secure a larger share of power.

 

•    As a result, he not only saw no purpose in identifying with this more genuine exploiter of people than maybe the colonial rulers, but he also did not hesitate to openly criticise it when it stood in the way of dalit emancipation. 

 

•    He detected rot in all such battles that refused to acknowledge the brutal exploitation of certain of their own people within their boundaries and tended to externalise their problems. His second argument came when he brought up the issue of Hindu imperialism, which was considered as more savage by its victims than British authority because of its caste system.

 

•    Apart from the major types of exploitation, subaltern forms of exploitation, such as women's exploitation, could not escape his agenda. He saw them as the most downtrodden people on the planet. 

 

•    He spoke out against the society's discrimination towards women. His fundamental rule of social engineering was that social revolutions must always begin from the perspective of the downtrodden or those on the bottom rung of society. 

 

•    He constantly included women in his battles and tended to elevate them to positions of power. For example, at Mahad (Drinking Water Satyagraha, Maharashtra, 1927), over 500 women marched at the head of the historical procession to affirm the untouchables' right to drink water from the public tank. In 1951, he oversaw the formulation of a new law allowing women to pick their partners and divorce them if required.

 

•    Religion was envisioned as the institution that would manage the organisation at the individual and societal levels in order to restrain their inherent predatory inclinations. It was a philosophical instrument that would govern their lives, including the most basic level of interaction between them. 

 

•    Ambedkar saw it as a code of conduct, a way of life that is followed by a large number of people. He urged that this code be based on and compatible with modern scientific principles. Marx's understanding of religion was neither the religion as it was often characterised or as it became a pill of opium for him.

 

•    When he eventually converted to Buddhism, he claimed to have done so using modern scientific criteria. Buddhism, as preached by Gautama Buddha, hardly deserved to be termed religion because it lacked even one of the three essential characteristics of religion: belief in God, a permanent reality, and a system of rituals. In his book 'Buddha and His Dhamma,' he reconstructs and redefines Buddhism with an almost scientific method. Many individuals were perplexed by Buddhism's radical worldview and rational approach in its purer form. It had no space for God, no ritual, and no permanent entity, which are all features of other religions. Its foundation is stated to be morality, and its motto is shockingly a pure democratic standard of "happiness and welfare of many" (Bahujan Hitay, Bahujan Sukhay).

 

•    To sum up, Ambedkar was a social prophet who spoke for the untouchables. He was a patriot without a doubt, and he would not be opposed to national integration. Nobody can argue with his position that the liberation of the untouchables from the terrible humiliations imposed by Hinduism was a matter of more urgency than the political freedom from alien British authority. 

 

•    As a result, Ambedkar deserves credit for educating Hindus about the serious socioeconomic problems that must be addressed; else, they may eventually bring down not only the Hindu community, but also the entire Indian political structure. Through his scholarly papers, lectures, leadership, and constructive efforts, he will leave an indelible mark on history.